A recording of the Guidonian Hand from last week’s performance of music from Eve Beglarian’s “River Project” is currently being broadcast nationwide on the Studio 360 program out of New York!
For details on when the broadcast will reach your neck of the woods, check out Studio 360′s list of participating stations here!
Our intrepid trombone quartet, The Guidonian Hand, performs Eve Beglarian‘s inspiring new “River Project” this Saturday night (Jan. 21) at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City. In what’s sure to be a moving exploration of Beglarian’s impressions of the country’s original slow-moving superhighway, Guidonian hand will perform with violinist Mary Rowell and Loadbang in this first night’s program, “The Night of the Sirens,” (“…in which the harsh sound of a warning alarm in Plaquemine, Louisiana, is electronically deconstructed alongside a plaintive text by Rilke about returning home after a long journey without any words to describe it,” says the Abrons). Subsequent programs on January 27th and 28th include performances by Newspeak, Taylor Levine, and Malcomb J. Merriweather.
Check our event page for more details.
The event was featured in the current New Yorker!
A bit before janus trio‘s recent performance at Masters and Pelavin Gallery in New York, they were visited by Thomas Deneuville from one of our favorite blogs ever, I Care If You Listen. Deneuville sat down for a chat with the trio and talked a bit about their album i am not, the evolution of their performances and rep, and their favorite spots in New York. Click here for the video at ICIYL — we can only hope for more like this from ICIYL (so far there are great posts about composer Kate Moore, videographer and musical experimenter Florent Ghys, and more).
Mark your calendars now! Major group performances are set for New York City, Cambridge, and Burlington this season as a Ariel Artists unveils its new “Four Quartets: Variations” program for late November and early December.
“Four Quartets: Variations,” revolving around T. S. Eliot’s inimitable sequence Four Quartets, is a theatrical, musical and poetic tour de force. Moored by the performances of four vocalizing actors and four poets interacting with excerpted and remixed text of Eliot’s Four Quartets, the project also features byways into performance sets by Iktus (percussion quartet) and The Guidonian Hand (trombone quartet) which expand the musical reaches and correspondences of the poem. Emphasizing the profundity and structural revelations of Eliot’s book-length text, the actors and musicians surround the poets’ recitations with extended techniques of all varieties, from improbable instrumental sounds to extremes of vocal and improvisatory production, letting the text re-echo in time past, time present, and time future. Fare forward, voyagers.
The performance in Cambridge, Mass., will feature the incredible Bryant Park Quartet in place of Iktus. Poets will vary with each performance, but overall will include Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, R. Dwayne Betts, Thalia Field, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Major Jackson, Katie Ford, and Cathy Park Hong.
Actors include Marya Lowry, Phil Timberlake, Corianna Moffatt, and Nate Speare.
Poster for the New York City performance of "Four Quartets: Variations"
PERFORMANCE DATES AND DETAILS:
November 28, 2011
Featuring Artists: Bryant Park Quartet, Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, R. Dwayne Betts, Thalia Field, Nate Speare, Corianna Moffatt, Phil Timberlake, Marya Lowry, The Guidonian Hand
Where: OBERON
Cambridge, Massachusetts
$15 adv/$20 door ($10 student)
November 30, 2011
Featuring Artists: The Guidonian Hand, Oni Buchanan, Nate Speare, Corianna Moffatt, Phil Timberlake, Marya Lowry, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Major Jackson, Jon Woodward, Iktus Percussion Quartet
Where: University of Vermont, Davis Center
Burlington, Vermont
free admission
December 2, 2011
Featuring Artists: The Guidonian Hand, Katie Ford, Jon Woodward, Cathy Park Hong, Oni Buchanan, Nate Speare, Corianna Moffatt, Phil Timberlake, Marya Lowry, Iktus Percussion Quartet
Where: The Tank
New York, New York
$15
Solo pianist Oni Buchanan and poet Jon Woodward have just announced a new piece for piano and electronics from American electroacoustic composer John Gibson.
The piece will serve as accompaniment and counterpart to a live reading by Woodward of his mind-bending new poem “Uncanny Valley.” The full program is now in the works and is set for performances beginning in September 2012.
“Uncanny Valley” is a long serial poem in 16 sections, meant to be read out loud, with numerous optional repeats throughout the text. These repetitions act as accumulations of sound, maddening as well as hypnotic. Gibson’s piece provides a sonic environment in which the text floats freely, with its pacing determined by the two performers. Digital samples triggered by both performers mirror and enmesh the piano and spoken text.
Jon Woodward’s Uncanny Valley manuscript recently won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s 2011 Open Competition and will soon be published by the school. He has two other volumes of poetry published: Rain (Wave Books, 2006) and Mister Goodbye Easter Island (Alice James Books, 2003).
John Gibson’s works have been performed across the world by groups like London Sinfonietta, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Seattle Symphony, the Music Today Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, and Ekko! He writes sound processing and synthesis software, and has taught composition and computer music at the University of Virginia, Duke University, and the University of Louisville. He is now Assistant Professor of Composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
